Dutch Catholicism, RIP

So then, Jack Chick was correct about the Catholic Church afterall?

Let's face it, European culture and Christain culture was oil and water anyway. How many years since Romans started mixing in with Christians did the Church actually look and act anything like Jesus said it should?

Rod, have you ever seprated wheat kernals from the wheat stalk? I have. You have very few seeds compared to a lot of plant fiber.

Pope Benedict started implementing the Gospel and Apostolic truth shortly after taking his new position. It's not surprising that his denomination is having such problems with false teachers and their false ideas popping to the forefront. Did we think Satan was going to just let Benedict lead people away from evil that easily?

My Latin and French teacher was a priest from Holland. I admired him very much; he was a no-nonsense old guy who threw blackboard erasers at us when we fell asleep in class, actually challenged us vocationally, and told us a lot of stories about growing up in Europe during the war. If he hadn't passed away a few years ago, I can imagine the rants he'd have about the state of his homeland and the rest of Europe these days.

Donny, It should be noted that Dutch Protestantism (historically the majority in the Netherlands) experienced total collapse long ago. Along with the rest of Protestant Europe (e.g., Scotland, England, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway), it went quietly, with little fuss, and left behind only nihilism and religious ignorance.

Will the last person who believes in the value of Western Enlightenment thinking married to a Judeo-Christian worldview please turn out the lights?

Even if you change the name, the superstition remains the same.

ACtually, JPL, what you said is true even if serious. That is, there are going to be many more of the Ten Booms, people who sacrifice themselves to save others in the midst of an encroaching invasion.

It's easy to make fun of this, and it really ought to be mocked, mercilessly.

I shall, but first I must overcome the giggles.

Revelations 2:4-5 "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."

Once abroad in a Muslim country I went to Easter Eucharistic Liturgy with the Church packed with Filipinos and Kerala Indian Christian expatriates. I caught a taxi home with a Pakistani Muslim driver who asked my what was this huge crowd all about.

I told him "Christian Eid"! He nodded and seemed to understand.

(Eid or "eid al fitr" is at the end of Ramadan as Easter is at the end of Lent).

Evangelical Christians came out of the dark ages just fine. The Church of Christ Jesus will survive the mental illness of secular humanism that has taken the life out of Europeans.

sj,

Mixing Islam and Christianity proves my assertion that the common Lefty/Progressive/Humanist European is devoid of reasoning ability. They're just left with emotionalism and hedonism. The same tired history of mankind played out with cell phone in hand.

Amazing how accurate the Bible was to predicting the fall of yet another group of God-mockers.

Good grief, Donny, do you even know what the so-called Dark Ages are? Try Christopher Dawson's "The Making Of Europe" and then, maybe, you might have a clue. The Protestant Reformation took place a couple of centuries into the Renaissance, and contemporary style Evangelical Protestantism (very much a function of 19th Century technological and cultural changes; JPL is right) would shock either Luther or Calvin silly. And no, Jack Chick was not right about the Catholic Church after all. Jack Chick is a well-known loon, and the fact that you even pose that rhetorical question tells me most of what I need to know about where you're coming from. If you want to know about the history of the early Church, I suggest you go to some original sources, The Didache, perhaps, or the Shepherd of Hermas or the Epistles of St. Ignatius, which he wrote while on the way to Rome to be martyred for Christ. Once you begin to get some information from the people who were actually there, instead of whackjob cartoonists, you will find that the early Church looked, smelled and tasted very, very Catholic indeed, from the earliest days for which we have records. Forgive me for being cranky, but for heaven's sake, inform yourself a bit!

"It should be noted that Dutch Protestantism (historically the majority in the Netherlands) experienced total collapse long ago. Along with the rest of Protestant Europe (e.g., Scotland, England, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway), it went quietly, with little fuss, and left behind only nihilism and religious ignorance. "

This is an important point. I was only vaguely aware that there even were Catholics in the Netherlands; I always thought of it as Calvinist. Within Europe, unlike the USA, Catholicism tends to be much more vigorous than Protestantism. I think this is because, with a few exceptions, European Protestantism was basically tied up with state churches. In the UK, virtually the only full Protestant churches are those with African or West Indian members, whereas Catholicism is pretty vigorous.

I'm not a Christian, and I'm sceptical about this "failure of Christianity = Islamic conquest" equation that some here are putting forward. I do think there's a grain of truth, in that our inability to respond vigorously to Islam is due to a loss of nerve in our civilisation, but I think what needs defending is basic Enlightenment ideas, like free speech, individual freedoms, etc. Part of the problem is that a lot of Europe, including the UK and the Netherlands, never really had the Enligtenment in the Franco-American sense - we sort of slid into freedom of speech and religion, because burning heretics and waging religious wars were messy and got in the way of making money, unlike the Enlightenment states (France and USA, and Germany and Italy to some extent), which made an ideological stand. This means that we have an endless tendency to fudge and compromise. What's more, the worst fudgers and compromisers tend to be Christian.

I have said repeatedly that Islam is incompatible with Enlightenment principles (eg. the US Constitution). Look, I might be wrong about this, but the only way to find out is to actually vigorously apply Enlightenment principles - I think that will involve something approaching civil war.

It's easy to say that to defeat Islam we need someone like Charles Martel, and thus militant Catholicism. However, other civilisations have been just as effective in fighting Muslims as has Christendom - China, for example. Personally, if I were to pick a hero, it would be the Indian, Shivaji. One of the worst things about the British Raj was taht it nipped the Rajput-Maratha Hindu fight-back in the bud, and thus left India with a large Muslim minority.

Hey, let's cut to the chase. Just how did Evangelicalism survive the Mesozoic Era?

The French for Easter is Les Paques. The French for Passover is La Paque Juive. I translate that, perhaps erroneously, as The Jewish Easter. This is ironic in that Paque comes from the Greek word Pascha, a transliteration of the Hebrew word Pesach, i.e. Passover. I would like to suggest the French start calling Easter La Paque Chretienne. In all honesty, as a Jew, the French hasn't bothered me, and I don"t think that Christians should be bothered by the Ramadan comment either. I am, however, as always, ready to be shown where I am wrong. Don

I think you miss the point CG, since the Dutch have been Christian for nearly 2 millenia, it's kinda odd that they have to resort to an alien religion/culture's terminology to explain a basic and long practiced tenant of their religion.

Allah is the Arabic word for "God." It is used by Arab Christians in their liturgy and personal prayers. There is nothing un-Christian about European Christians using it too.

The analogy between Lent and Ramadan is not quite as neat, but what on earth is wrong with the traditional socratic technique of explaining the unknown in terms of the known? Yes, it may say something disturbing about the culture of the Netherlands that Lent is the unknown and Ramadan is the known, but, as religious history all over the globe has shown for millennia, you work with the materials at hand to accomplish holy work. This hubbub about the use of Arabic terms, some of which are specifically Muslim and some of which are not, to illuminate Christian culture, is pure bigotry, and does no honor to the God we all worship.

So they went from pagan straight to Calvinism?

Southern Holland is and always has been Catholic, as long as it's been Christian. Northern Holland is the Calvinist part.

Yeah, CG, the point is that the Dutch are so far alienated from their own history that they have to explain a very basic Christian tradition in terms of Islam. That's just ... bizarre. Jane Jacobs says the key characteristic of a Dark Age is forgetting. A people suffering through a Dark Age not only have forgotten something essential about themselves, they have forgotten that they even knew it once upon a time. By that standard, the Dutch are well into a Dark Age, at least by my Christian standard of judgment.

I mean, really, even if they were no longer religious believers, you'd think that they'd understand what Lent is. Carnival is still celebrated every year on the day before Ash Wednesday in Holland.

A people suffering through a Dark Age not only have forgotten something essential about themselves, they have forgotten that they even knew it once upon a time. By that standard, the Dutch are well into a Dark Age, at least by my Christian standard of judgment.

Seeing that the ancient Friesans' pagan rituals and holidays are as forgotten, maybe the alternative conclusion is that Lent has lost its value because it teaches little or nothing worth knowing.

Heschel calls orthopraxy whose reasons and lessons are lost on the people performing the rituals "religious behaviorism".

Maybe the Dutch need Mardi Gras to help them remember what Lent is. That has surely helped the residents of New Orleans remain a spiritual people.

Using Muslim terminology seems to be a necessary part of the liturgy led renewal in the RCC. JP II approved of this behaviour as he kissed the Muslim bible.